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Thursday, February 4, 2016

President Obama's Speech at the Mosque

President Obama's speech at an American mosque (the first of his presidency) set the pious haters on the right chattering and bleating. "Why did he go to a mosque," they asked, pretending not to know what the affect Donald Trump's ugly rhetoric against Muslims has had on this country. They even question Mr. Obama's Christian faith -- asserting that the president is not a Christian but a secret Muslim. This is the logical end to the pious haters' (or as I call them, the Hallelujah Hypocrites) long march to delegitimize Mr. Obama as an American and as a Christian. These are the same pious haters who rode the birther bandwagon for as long as they could to damage President Obama as much as they could.

At the Islamic Society of Baltimore, the President spoke directly to “his fellow Christians” because although impressing on Muslim Americans that they have the same freedom of religion as Christians, only the Christian right attacks Muslims.

All the while, they cling to their bible and Constitution to justify their deep-seated evangelical bigotry toward faiths other than Americanized Christianity.

The President said,
“If we’re serious about freedom of religion — and I’m speaking now to my fellow Christians who remain the majority in this country — we have to understand an attack on one faith is an attack on all our faiths. And when any religious group is targeted, we all have a responsibility to speak up. And we have to reject a politics that seeks to manipulate prejudice or bias, and targets people because of religion.” President Obama was talking to more than just “his fellow Christians.” He was talking to Republicans in Congress, state legislatures and the current crop of GOP presidential aspirants; all of whom embrace politics that incite bias against and target Muslims for political expediency.
At least the President echoed...that Americans have to start speaking up against religious bigotry or watch the nation become a Christian iteration of the Islamic State. Even though he framed it in different terms; “We can’t be bystanders to bigotry. Together, we’ve got to show that America truly protects all faiths.”

But the pious haters will have none of it. They claim President Obama is not a Christian, so how can he speak to them? They want to throw every Muslim out of this country, including Americans who practice the Muslim faith. Many of these pious haters support Ted Cruz, whose father is a Christian Dominionist, and who himself uses his faith to cull as many votes from the Christian right as he can.

“U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz — whose father is Rafael Cruz, a rabid right-wing Christian preacher and the director of the Purifying Fire International ministry — and legions of the senator’s wealthy supporters...are rooted in a radical Christian ideology known as Dominionism or Christian Reconstructionism.
This ideology calls on anointed “Christian” leaders to take over the state and make the goals and laws of the nation “biblical.”It seeks to reduce government to organizing little more than defense, internal security and the protection of property rights. It fuses with the Christian religion the iconography and language of American imperialism and nationalism, along with the cruelest aspects of corporate capitalism.[skip]
This ideology,...calls for the eradication of social “deviants,” beginning with gay men and lesbians, whose sexual orientation, those in the movement say, is a curse and an illness, contaminating the American family and the country. Once these “deviants” are removed, other “deviants,” including Muslims, liberals, feminists, intellectuals, left-wing activists, undocumented workers, poor African-Americans and those dismissed as “nominal Christians” — meaning Christians who do not embrace this peculiar interpretation of the Bible — will also be ruthlessly repressed. The “deviant” government bureaucrats, the “deviant” media, the “deviant” schools and the “deviant” churches, all agents of Satan, will be crushed or radically reformed. The rights of these “deviants” will be annulled.“Christian values” and “family values” will, in the new state, be propagated by all institutions. Education and social welfare will be handed over to the church. Facts and self-criticism will be replaced with relentless indoctrination.”
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The intellectual and moral hollowness of the ideology, its flagrant distortion and misuse of the Bible, the contradictions that abound within it — its leaders champion small government and a large military, as if the military is not part of government — and its laughable pseudo-science are impervious to reason and fact. And that is why the movement is dangerous."

10 comments:

Rather than become a lame duck, I believe President Obama has decided to spend his last year trolling the GOP. I'm sure he was sincere in visiting the mosque. The fact that it gives the right xenophobic paroxysms is a definite bonus, tho.

This ideology,...calls for the eradication of social “deviants,” beginning with gay men and lesbians, whose sexual orientation, those in the movement say, is a curse and an illness, contaminating the American family and the country.

Funny, take out the word "American" and this is essentially a description of ISIL's position. The extremists are basically alike, whatever religion they profess.

Republican presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) slammed President Barack Obama's visit to a mosque on Wednesday, during which the president denounced anti-Muslim rhetoric, for "pitting people against each other."

But Rubio, who often advocates for religious liberty and speaks of his faith on the campaign trail, is the one engaging in divisive rhetoric.

After Donald Trump said he would consider shutting down U.S. mosques in the wake of the Paris terror attacks, which were carried out by Islamic extremists, Rubio declined to discount the idea in an interview on Fox News:

It’s not about closing down mosques. It’s about closing down any place -- whether it’s a cafe, a diner, an internet site -- any place where radicals are being inspired. The bigger problem we have is our inability to find out where these places are, because we’ve crippled our intelligence programs, both through unauthorized disclosures by a traitor in Edward Snowden, or by some of the things this president has put in place with the support even of some from my own party to diminish our intelligence capabilities.

“So whatever facility is being used -- it’s not just a mosque -- any facility that’s being used to radicalize and inspire attacks against the United States should be a place that we look at.”In contrast, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush called the notion of shutting down mosques and creating a database of Muslims "just wrong."

Does it really matter what religion he practices or if he has no beliefs. The division of church and state should be enforced but it is not. Why do churches and charities get tax exempt status if we are suppose to have the division. Why do ministry's that take money out of the country get tax exempt status and their contributors get a deduction.

Because Religionists got Congress to favor them. That's why. Why should invisible sky gods and their followers get any special favoritism from a government? They shouldn't. It's a sweet, sweet scam that we all pay for.

If Cruz gets the nomination, the Democrats will plaster the airwaves with this information on how radical and out of the mainstream Cruz is:

"Last Fall, Cruz appeared in Iowa alongside a pastor who has called for the government to use the death penalty to punish homosexuality. Not stung from the criticism he received for courting the radical pastor, Kevin Swanson, Cruz he later released a statement touting the support of an anti-abortion extremist, Troy Newman, who has said that a just government would punish abortion providers with death. Again facing criticism, Cruz doubled down and appointed Newman co-chair of his “pro-life coalition.”